The Master of Phoenix Hall by Jennifer Wilde

Author:Jennifer Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497698253
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance

VII

LAUREL MELLORY came to see me frequently in the weeks that followed. I helped her trim her petticoats with the lace she had bought at the fair and we sat in the parlor, talking quietly as I trimmed the fine linen with the delicate cobwebby lace. I came to know the girl and her many moods. She had frail health and was subject to severe migraine headaches and burning fevers, and when these came she had to stay in bed with all the draperies tightly drawn. With me she was bright and bubbling with gaity and then, for no apparent reason, sunk into a fit of melancholy gloom.

She told me of all that was happening at Phoenix Hall. The outside repairs had been completed and the workmen sent back to Devon, and now Roderick Mellory was having work done inside. A fine craftsman from Paris had come to work on the wainscoting, and an Italian with an impressive reputation was working with marble. The parquet floor of the ballroom had been touched up, the plaster redone, new paint added. It would all be completed near the end of the month, and then there was to be a great ball to display a renovated Phoenix Hall. The expense of it all was staggering, but Roderick Mellory would be satisfied.

“All the money he made in India is gone,” Laurel said, “but the house is beautiful. I wonder what will happen now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Now that it is all done, Roderick will have nothing to do. There has to be something to fill his hours. He can’t stand to be idle. I am worried.”

I had no doubt that Roderick Mellory would find some way to fill his hours. When the repairs were all done he could devote more time to trying to evict me from Dower House. After I had told him about the note thrown through my window, there had been no more incidents, although Nan swore she saw a man prowling out in the garden. She had awakened me, alarmed, but when we peered outside no one was there. I thought I saw a dim light flashing in the granite quarries, but it came and went so quickly that I could have been mistaken.

“Did you see a light out there?” I asked Nan. “In the quarry?”

“Not this time,” Nan said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been there before, Miss Angel. I have seen lights out there, moving around. Sometimes more than one.”

“Perhaps it’s a farmer, looking for a stray animal,” I suggested.

“If it is, then those animals sure get loose a lot,” Nan said. “Do you think that’s what it is?”

“Probably, Nan.”

I remembered Billy Johnson telling us about the lights in the quarry and in the woods and the local speculation that the band of robbers had a den hereabouts. I remembered the highwayman dressed all in black and the two stocky brutes with him. That seemed such a long time ago, and it was fantastic to believe that they could be somewhere around here.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.